Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Meston Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I join in welcoming the Bill. The Long Title states that it is to

“make provision about the experience of victims within the criminal justice system”.

In that context, it is strange to be considering such a Bill in the absence of Lady Newlove. A good test of what can be achieved by the Bill will be whether she would have approved of it. I am sure we all hope that our final product would meet with her approval.

I will focus on two topics: the power to order an offender to attend court for sentencing and the proposed restrictions on parental responsibility. The problem of convicted criminals in serious cases who refuse to attend court for a sentencing hearing is relatively new, but regrettably it has not gone away, and the Government are now right to deal with it by involving deterrent measures.

Sentencing judges are well used to dealing with attention-seeking misbehaviour by some offenders, but the Bill gives a clearer framework for the powers available to the judge, not just when the offender fails or refuses to attend, but when he does attend and interrupts the hearing or otherwise misbehaves and has to be removed.

A sentencing hearing is important, because it is when the offender is made publicly accountable for his criminal action and has to confront the disapproval of society for what he has done, and to hear the evidence of the impact on the victim and the victim’s family. A refusal to attend adds insult to injury and highlights the lack of any remorse. It was in one such case rightly described by the judge as “spineless”.

Clearly, when a very long sentence is inevitable, a relatively short additional sentence may not persuade such a defendant with little or nothing to lose to co-operate or to behave. There is a limit to what can be expected of prison or custody officers in manhandling a resistant offender into the dock. There can in those cases be a risk of making a bad situation look worse. However, clarification in the Bill that reasonable force may be used if necessary and proportionate is welcome.

The important point of these new provisions is that victims can be reassured that they will be heard and that offenders will know that if they think about not attending there will be consequences, not just in the longer term with a further sentence that may have little or no real meaning, but in the short term with the new prison sanctions order.

Turning to Clauses 3 and 4, it is clearly right and necessary to introduce an effective mechanism to curtail any exercise of parental responsibility by fathers who commit sexual offences against a child. That must mean a sexual offence against any child, not just a child for whom the man may have had parental responsibility: that is what I now understand the Bill to intend, as the Minister has been good enough to confirm. I welcome that confirmation, because paragraph 176 of the Explanatory Notes accompanying the Bill suggests that it might still be restricted to offences against the children for whom the man holds parental responsibility. I understand that not to be correct.

I suspect that none of us has any reservations about the essential principles underlying these proposals. The chair of the Bar Council has said:

“Parental responsibility should not be regarded as an inalienable right which is retained regardless of parental behaviour and actions … Restricting parental responsibility for perpetrators of child sex offences is a strong protective measure for those left behind after acts of violence and abuse within a family”.


I suggest that this should also apply to any such serious sexual acts committed outside the family context which are wholly incompatible with the retention of parental responsibility.

Without getting too involved in the details of the current law, it is important to appreciate that not all fathers automatically have parental responsibility. If not married to the mother, a father would acquire it only with her agreement for him to be registered and named as the father on the birth certificate, or by later agreement or order. It is also important to appreciate that the family court can and does already terminate, suspend or restrict parental responsibility when there is a risk of significant harm to the child or siblings, and when the father’s conduct and retention of parental responsibility have become an intolerable concern to the mother. But there have been cases in which obstructive fathers, out of malice or lack of insight or empathy, force a mother into protracted and costly litigation to protect the children and herself, as their mother, and to remove the need for her to involve the father in decision-making about their future care and upbringing.

At least, in the cases covered by this Bill, a more summary mechanism will be made available. The Bill builds on Section 18 of the 2024 Act—Jade’s law, which is not yet in force. It will prevent the exercise of parental responsibility but without actually altogether terminating parental responsibility. Clause 3 requires a sentence of at least four years before it operates. That leaves the cases of those with lesser sentences remaining to be dealt with in the family court, as now. I accept that there is a need to draw lines so as to make best use of the resources, expertise and powers of both courts without overburdening either, but where lines are drawn may need more exploration during the passage of the Bill.

I will briefly raise some other procedural and evidential points. First, has consideration been given to any mechanism to restrict applications for, or the exercise of, parental responsibility during what is now likely to be a long period between the initial charge and the final sentencing? Is that to be left to bail conditions or to the family court on a separate application by the mother or a local authority, or could the Crown Court now be given power to make an interim order?

Secondly, assuming that the Crown Court will be making orders covering all children for whom the defendant has parental responsibility without later review by the family court, how will the Crown Court get reliable information about who those children are and about their status and circumstances, particularly if the defendant is unwilling or unable to assist and the court has no access to existing court orders concerning those children? Regrettably, some men have selective memories about their offspring. How will the mothers of those children be identified, located and then informed about what the Crown Court is doing or may have done?

Finally, as to children who have been or may have been conceived as a result of rape, it may be difficult at the time of sentencing to ascertain whether the child was in fact so conceived, if there was a pre-existing relationship between the couple continuing at least until the rape. The difficulty no doubt already exists if the Criminal Court has to decide whether the mother’s enforced pregnancy was an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes in rape cases.

Broadly, however, in cases of uncertainty, I welcome the measures in the new Section 10F. This requires the Crown Court to notify the local authority, which will have to assess the likely co-operation or otherwise of the mother and any possible need for orders from the family court. This may require further fact-finding. In this regard, I consider that the Bill goes as far as it needs to in such situations. Subject to those comments, most of the Bill’s provisions are welcome.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Meston Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

I have signed Amendment 34, also from the noble Lord, Lord Meston, on extending Jade’s law. During the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, we in your Lordships’ House debated extending Jade’s law to ensure that, when an offender is convicted of the murder or voluntary manslaughter of a person with whom they have shared parental responsibility, that responsibility is automatically suspended on sentencing. Jade Ward was a mother who was murdered by her former partner, leaving behind four children. He was sentenced to 25 years but was allowed to continue his parental responsibility. Despite the Victims and Prisoners Act coming into force in May 2024, Section 18 on Jade’s law has not been commenced, and we are struggling to understand why. I hope the Minister will explain—or even better, tell us—that it will be commenced. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, would go further, and we support him in this. I beg to move.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I have four amendments in this group, three of which, like that just proposed powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, seek to explore the thinking behind the four-year minimum prison sentence required by Clause 3 to trigger the duty of the Crown Court to make a prohibited steps order to restrict the offender’s parental responsibility. My Amendments 15 and 19 would lower the minimum sentence required to one of more than six months.

Before I develop the argument a little further, I will comment on a couple of points made by the noble Baroness. Much of what she said, I entirely agree with, but please let us not talk about parental rights. The central reform of the Children Act 1989 was to substitute for the concept of parental rights the concept of parental responsibility, which is why it appears in the Bill and has been part of our law for a long time. As I have already said, it replaced the reference to rights as determining who had authority over aspects of the child’s life or upbringing. The other point I am afraid I take issue with is her suggestion that, in too many cases, the court sees matters only through the eyes of the parent who is seeking to assert his rights or responsibilities. That, I suggest, is not correct, and it is certainly not my experience of how the family courts work.

Returning to the substance of these amendments, it is clearly difficult to determine where to draw the line in such cases, bearing in mind that a convicted person whose sentence does not cross that line is still quite liable to have any parental responsibility restricted by the family court if it cannot be done in the Crown Court. During debates in another place, the logic of the four-year minimum sentence was questioned. The Minister there argued that the four-year threshold provided a predetermined marker of seriousness for cases in which the restriction of parental responsibility by the Crown Court is to happen automatically.

The Minister said that the Government wanted to minimise the strain placed on the family court. There is force in those points at a practical level. As I suggested at Second Reading, one reason to draw the line at four years is to make best use of the resources, expertise and powers of both the criminal and the family court respectively, without overburdening either. However, one disadvantage of leaving too many of these cases to the family court is that it would deprive the mother and other family members of the benefit of the automatic suspension of parental responsibility, which the Bill provides. Indeed, it would require those who want to restrict parental responsibility to make their own applications to the family court, possibly without legal assistance, as the noble Baroness has indicated.

It is possible, by use of Ministry of Justice statistics for 2023, to get some approximation of the cases involved, which would give some idea of the number of offenders and the number of children who would be affected. In this respect, I am indebted to Amanda Newby, associate professor at Northumbria University, for her research and expert assistance on this and other amendments. In 2023, in England and Wales, there were 1,924 cases of serious sexual abuse, where an immediate prison sentence of between four and 15 years was imposed, in addition to which there were 44 sentences of life imprisonment. In the same year, there were some 1,093 cases involving serious child sexual abuse, where an immediate prison sentence of more than six months and less than four years was imposed. Only 59 such offenders were sentenced to six months or less.

Those statistics all involve adult offenders. It is clearly not possible to ascertain how many of those held parental responsibility for a child at the time of sentencing, but I suggest that it could have been considerably lower. On that basis, moving the threshold down to more than six months’ imprisonment would or could increase the number of potential cases by approximately 1,000 annually—although I repeat that many of those probably would not hold parental responsibility. That likely increase does show that a significant number of children would not be protected under the Bill if the threshold is not lowered. That is indeed an argument for lowering the threshold, as I hope I have indicated.

Amendment 27, in my name, perhaps illustrates some of the difficulties in drawing lines. The offence of sexual communication with a child under Section 15A of the 2003 Act is not covered by the Bill as presently drafted, because the maximum sentence for that offence is two years. That was an offence added in 2015 to the 2003 Act to cover a specific form of sexually motivated grooming, and it might now be thought that it should be covered by the provisions of this Bill. Essentially, it should be accepted that one real difficulty is that the Crown Court, under the Bill, is going to be required to make orders under the Children Act for which the family court is generally the more appropriate forum. Further, the Bill does not contain any provision for mandatory review by the family court, as was provided under Section 18 of the Victims and Prisoners Act, known as Jade’s law. In the family court, the other parent would have the status of a party and could be represented, and that court would have access to the relevant family history and to evidence in the form of professional welfare and other reports if required. In other words, quite frankly, there are compelling arguments either way.

Amendment 34 is in my name and has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It does not concern sexual offences but, rather, seeks to extend what is now known as Jade’s law, which was enacted under the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. As the noble Baroness reminded us, Section 18 restricts parental responsibility where one parent kills the other and is convicted of murder or a specific category of manslaughter. At the suggestion of the Victims’ Commissioner, we seek to amend that provision to include the attempted murder by one parent of the other.

I do not recall that being suggested when the 2024 Act passed through Parliament—the omission of attempted murder may have been an oversight—but there was some caution when, at various stages, suggestions of extending Jade’s law to other offences of violence were ventilated. Be that as it may, I submit that it is clearly appropriate to include attempted murder involving the most extreme form of non-fatal assault. To do so would relieve the victim from the obligation to seek the perpetrator’s agreement on decisions concerning the child and, if agreement is not forthcoming, from having to apply to the court.

The Victims’ Commissioner has become aware of the concerns of survivors of attempted murder when the offender has retained parental responsibility over their children. Without giving details, I had to deal with a case where the convicted parent used his status to obstruct the other parent, clearly motivated only by a desire for revenge, causing the other parent further distress and expense, as well as an inescapable fear of what he might try to do when released from prison. People in that position should be relieved and shielded from having to go to court unless absolutely necessary to do so.

Finally, I join the noble Baroness in mentioning the commencement of Section 18—Jade’s law. It is not retrospective and has yet to be brought into force, so the reality is that nobody has yet benefited from it. Can the Minister say when it will be put into effect?

I do not want to trespass on arguments to be advanced on other amendments, but I share the curiosity about the provisions in the Bill covering what would happen in the event of an acquittal on appeal or when a sentence is reduced on appeal. To that I add the question of whether prohibited steps could be made where a sentence is increased on appeal or under the unduly lenient sentence scheme to one of more than four years.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to support the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on Amendment 34. As they mentioned, the Victims’ Commissioner has been approached by a variety of individuals who survived attempted murder by their other half or partner. In those cases, they face a dilemma. In some cases, the difference between being murdered or not is a matter of an ambulance arriving two minutes earlier and managing to stop a murder attempt, whereas if it arrived two minutes later that person might have died. Alternatively, it might be a matter of a neighbour hearing what was going on and making a telephone call so that the authorities arrive in time. It is a very narrow difference, frankly, as to whether somebody ends up dead or injured but alive.

In some of those instances, the perpetrator, who has gone to prison, retains parental responsibility but may not know that. The surviving partner has a dilemma: if they bring it to the attention of the partner who is in prison and he is unaware of those rights, he may be tempted to try to use them to disrupt the life of the surviving partner. I do not think that anybody would wish that to happen.

In the instance that a survivor feels strongly enough that they want to try to go through the courts to have the parental responsibility of the person who tried to kill them stripped away, the onus is on the survivor to go through the family courts. That can be quite a lengthy and complicated process. It is often made more difficult because the quality and flow of relevant information between the criminal court, which sends the attempted murderer to prison, and the family court is not always as open and as clear as it might be.

For all those reasons, I hope that, when she comes to reply, the Minister can clarify the Government’s view on this and, in particular, why commencement of the original Jade’s law seems to have been delayed. What is holding it up? How quickly can we expect it to be put into operation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendments 16, 25 28 and 33 arise from the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member. The Joint Committee has written to the Ministry of Justice on a number of occasions regarding these issues and has so far not met with a satisfactory response. I shall listen very carefully to what the Minister says on these points.

As the Bill stands, the Crown Court must make a prohibited steps order after sentencing. It is right that an offender should not be able to exercise parental responsibility, but there should be safeguards in the Bill to ensure that children do not suffer as a result, especially if the effect of the order is that there is no one who can exercise parental responsibility.

On Amendments 16 and 28 in my name, unlike the family court, the Crown Court would have limited discretion about how best to protect the interests of affected children, as we heard identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, in the previous group. Under the Bill, the Crown Court’s main discretion is that it must not make an order if

“it appears to the Crown Court that it would not be in the interests of justice to do so”—

a well-hallowed phrase in legislation that noble Lords will find in Clause 3(4)(c).

In this context, it is unclear what is meant by the phrase—in particular, whether it would allow the court to consider the interests of the affected children or just of the offender. The Joint Committee wrote to the Minister asking for clarification as to whether the effect of the Human Rights Act would be that the Court would be able to consider the interests of the child when making the order. The Minister replied that the court would have to act compatibly with the ECHR. In fact, she said:

“Under our existing measure, the Crown Court will be able to consider all of the information available to it, as part of the criminal proceedings, when deciding whether to exercise the interests of justice test (and in doing so, will be bound to act compatibly with the Convention Rights given section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998)”.


As noble Lords can see, that is an answer that, I fear, lacks clarity.

Amendments 16 and 28 would provide clarity on this point. They would ensure that the Crown Court was able to get information about the children’s circumstances and itself consider the implications for the children before making an order. They would simply append, after

“in the interests of justice”,

the words

“or that it would not be in the child’s best interests”

to make the prohibited steps order.

On Amendments 25 and 33, there would be particular concerns if the effect of such an order was that no one was able to exercise parental responsibility for a child. In Jade’s law, as we heard in the previous group, there is an attempt to address this by requiring the relevant local authority to apply to the family court immediately after the Crown Court has made its order. We can see that in new Section 10B(2) of the Children Act 1989 in Section 18 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.

Amendments 25 and 33 are carefully modelled on that provision in the 2024 Act. They would impose the same requirement on the local authority if an order under the new provisions had the effect that there was no one who could exercise parental responsibility for the child. In correspondence with the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Minister said that such a provision was appropriate in the case of Jade’s law, where one parent had killed the other, because in those cases there would almost always be no one with parental responsibility. But in the cases covered by the Bill, in contrast, there might or there might not be. The Minister said that the local authority would be aware if the child might be left in this position and would be able to take appropriate action.

That is a very unsatisfactory answer. There can be no confidence that the local authority will simply be aware of this scenario and there would be no detriment to making it clear in the Bill. Relying entirely on a local authority’s discretion invites the risk that a child is left without someone with parental responsibility and falls between the gaps.

These amendments would mean that the local authority would be under a duty to apply to the family court in such cases in exactly the same form as it would under Jade’s law. The Minister said in correspondence that local authorities would always know the circumstances of a particular case, so the Government should agree, and have already agreed in principle, that it would be workable for the Bill to impose a duty on them. There is no good reason for these amendments not to be accepted. I beg to move.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by commenting on two parts of the noble Lord’s amendments. I find it difficult to understand how his Amendment 16 would work in practice. These orders have to be made at the point of sentencing; they cannot come later on as an afterthought or at a later hearing. More importantly, I question how the Crown Court would be in a position to assess what is or is not in the interests of the child, and, certainly, how the Crown Court could do it without a report that typically, in the family court, might be available from Cafcass or a local authority.

Moreover, what would the Crown Court do if the suggestion of not making the order to remove or restrict parental responsibility is strongly opposed by the other parent, as would quite likely be? That other parent, certainly in the Crown Court, would not have party status and would probably not have legal representation.

On the face of it, the Crown Court might face the prospect of a contested hearing on the question of whether to restrict parental responsibility. Clearly, that is much better dealt with by the family court in the appropriate way. Having said that, I of course understand the force of the noble Lord’s Amendment 33, which seems to present a sensible solution to a potentially difficult problem.

I move briefly to my amendments in this group. They are procedural and evidential amendments. Amendment 23 would provide for the Crown Court that is required to make the prohibited steps order to be supplied with all necessary information to make the order, enabling it to make the order in appropriate terms, covering all the children to whom it might apply and enabling it to be provided to the other parent and others holding parental responsibility. As it appears from the very length of Amendment 23, parental responsibility can be acquired by a number of different people in a considerable range of situations. It almost goes without saying that the convicted offender may not be a reliable source of information about the children for whom he has parental responsibility, or the basis on which he might hold it. The Crown Court therefore cannot be expected simply to make a blanket, generic order referring to all or any children for whom the defendant holds or might hold parental responsibility. That would be of little use to anyone. The court therefore has to be in a position at the point of sentencing to make an order that should refer to specified children. For that, accurate and reliable information should be provided. As the amendment suggests, that would be best done by the Probation Service as part of the pre-sentence report.

Once that order has been made, it is also important that those who are affected by the order are notified of it. Hence, Amendment 17 would provide for notification by the Crown Court to the relevant local authority and the provision of a copy of the order, with a duty on the local authority to convey that information by onward notification to all persons who hold parental responsibility for the child or children concerned. Clearly, they need to know what has been ordered and to understand the effect of it. The local authority is best placed to provide that information.

Finally, Amendment 29 would ensure that in rape cases the victim is promptly and properly informed that the order has been made, with an obligation on the court to notify the relevant local authority within seven days of the order being made and an obligation on that local authority within 14 days thereafter to notify the victim of rape. Without this, there is a risk that the other parent or holder of parental responsibility for the child or children concerned, and the victim of the rape, are not made aware of the order or of its implications. They may be aware if they attend a sentencing hearing, but that is not certain. In any event, a local authority, particularly one involved with the family, would be best able to explain the effect of the prohibited steps order, its duration and other implications.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I shall again make one very brief observation. It is obvious that what is to be provided is a short, speedy, summary step to protect whatever range of offence is decided on. I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that the Crown Court cannot be the appropriate place to start debating what is in the interests of the child. We need to see whether a form of order can be devised, and an exchange of information put forward, that does not impinge on resources, say for the Probation Service, which is probably going to be in a worse position than the courts, that can give the speedy remedy that is needed simply and transfer, for the making of the final order, to the family court, which is obviously the right place to do it. I am not sure we need all these complicated pieces of legislation to do that: rather, it should be something probably very much simpler, with a power for the Minister to make regulations once a proper, simple procedure has been worked out. I fear we are getting ourselves into a degree of complexity that is not desirable.